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DRIVING THE DAY

MUCH OF THE ATTENTION over the next two weeks will be focused on July 17, when ROBERT MUELLER comes to Capitol Hill for public testimony in front of the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees. It’s inevitable Mueller’s appearance will amp up the conversation around impeachment, which had quieted down somewhat amid various other controversies.

IT’S WELL DOCUMENTED that Speaker NANCY PELOSI does not believe impeaching the president is smart politics. People around Pelosi have argued that it places vulnerable Democrats in a tough spot, and puts the House in jeopardy. She repeated her broader argument to Maureen Dowd in a column published in Sunday’s New York Times.

WELL, PER NEW GOP POLLING, SHE’S GOT A POINT … The National Republican Congressional Committeepolled five battleground districts, and found impeaching President DONALD TRUMP to be exceedingly unpopular.

HERE ARE THE DEETS … The NRCC asked this question between June 30 and July 2: “Do you support or oppose impeaching President Trump?” In these five districts, impeachment support is somewhere between 29% and 35%, and opposition is in the high 50s and 60s.. The NRCC, which polled 400 people in each district, concludes: “Impeachment is not popular in suburban battleground districts carried by both President Trump and Hillary Clinton.” Read the NRCC polling memo

HAPPENING TODAY … NYT, A1: “Jeffrey Epstein Is Accused of Luring Girls to His Manhattan Mansion and Abusing Them,” by Ali Watkins and Vivian Wang: “Federal prosecutors appear to have resurrected a federal sex crimes case against the billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein by focusing on accusations that he sexually assaulted girls at his mansion in Manhattan — more than a decade after a widely criticized plea deal shielded him from similar charges in Florida.

“Federal prosecutors are expected to unseal the new charges on Monday accusing Mr. Epstein, 66, of running a sex-trafficking operation that lured dozens of underage girls, some as young as 14, to his Upper East Side home, according to three law enforcement officials.” NYT

-- AP preview of today’s court appearance. They report DOJ will try to keep him in custody.

-- ELIE HONIG, CNN contributor and former federal prosecutor (@eliehonig): “It is unusual and notable that SDNY’s Public Corruption Unit is on the Epstein case. I keep thinking back to 2008 when I was in the SDNY and Public Corruption was on a seemingly routine interstate prostitution case. Turned out, then-NY Governor Eliot Spitzer was ‘Client 9.’”

AP’S JIM MUSTIAN and DESMOND BUTLER: “Federal grand jury probing GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy”: “A federal grand jury in New York is investigating top Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy, examining whether he used his position as vice chair of President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee to drum up business deals with foreign leaders, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press and people familiar with the matter.

“A wide-ranging subpoena the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn recently sent to Trump’s inaugural committee seeks records relating to 20 individuals and businesses. All have connections to Broidy, his investment and defense contracting firms, and foreign officials he pursued deals with — including the current president of Angola and two politicians in Romania.

“Prosecutors appear to be investigating whether Broidy exploited his access to Trump for personal gain and violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to offer foreign officials ‘anything of value’ to gain a business advantage. Things of value in this case could have been an invitation to the January 2017 inaugural events or access to Trump.

“A statement released to the AP by Broidy’s attorneys said that at no point did Broidy or his global security firm Circinus have a contract or exchange of money with ‘any Romanian government agency, proxy or agent.’” AP

Happy Monday morning.PELOSI has invited the U.S. women’s national soccer team, which defeated the Netherlands Sunday to win the World Cup, to the Capitol. Pelosi’s tweet … When asked yesterday if they’d be invited to the White House, TRUMP said, “We haven’t really thought about it. We will look at that, certainly.”

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THE CENSUS MESS -- “Justice Department changing lawyers on census case,” by WaPo’s Matt Zapotosky: “The Justice Department is swapping out the lawyers who had been representing the administration in its legal battle to put a question about citizenship on the 2020 Census, possibly signaling career attorneys’ legal or ethical concerns over the maneuvering ordered by President Trump.

“The department announced the move in a statement, which was issued after The Washington Post inquired about whether the career lawyers on the team planned to withdraw. A person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that at least some of the career attorneys harbored concerns about the administration’s handling of the case — although the nature of those concerns and how widespread they were could not immediately be learned.” WaPo

FACEBOOK AND TWITTER have not been invited to Trump’s social media summit on Thursday, per CNN’s Oliver Darcy: “[P]eople familiar with the matter … said they believe the summit would amount to a right-wing grievance session and was not aimed at seriously discussing some of the issues facing large technology companies.” CNN

WHAT THE E-RING IS READING: “Admiral to lead Navy instead will retire; bad judgment cited,” by AP’s Robert Burns: “The four-star admiral set to become the Navy’s top officer on Aug. 1 will instead retire, an extraordinary downfall prompted by what Navy Secretary Richard Spencer on Sunday called poor judgment regarding a professional relationship. …

“Spencer provided no details about the unnamed individual, but other officials said Spencer was referring to [Adm. William] Moran having recently taken public affairs counsel from Chris Servello, who was removed from his position as public affairs adviser to Richardson in 2017 and given a non-punitive letter of reprimand for drinking and fraternizing with junior officers during and after a December 2016 Navy Christmas party.

“Servello was accused of making unwanted sexual passes while dressed as Santa at the party. No charges were filed against him. He retired from the Navy last May at the rank of commander. Servello had previously worked for Moran as a public affairs officer.” AP

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THE ALBERTA BOOK BUZZ … BLOOMBERG: “Trump Compared AOC to Eva Perón”: “On Sunday afternoon, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted two quotes credited to Perón. ‘I know that, like every woman of the people, I have more strength than I appear to have,’ the congresswoman wrote in one.” $20.99 on Amazon

TALKER … WAPO: “FBI, ICE find state driver’s license photos are a gold mine for facial-recognition searches: A cache of records shared with The Washington Post reveals that agents are scanning millions of Americans’ faces without their knowledge or consent,” by Drew Harwell: “Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have turned state driver’s license databases into a facial-recognition gold mine, scanning through millions of Americans’ photos without their knowledge or consent, newly released documents show.

“Thousands of facial-recognition requests, internal documents and emails over the past five years, obtained through public-records requests by Georgetown Law researchers and provided to The Washington Post, reveal that federal investigators have turned state departments of motor vehicles databases into the bedrock of an unprecedented surveillance infrastructure.

“Police have long had access to fingerprints, DNA and other ‘biometric data’ taken from criminal suspects. But the DMV records contain the photos of a vast majority of a state’s residents, most of whom have never been charged with a crime.” WaPo

QUOTE DU JOUR -- Michelle Obama, interviewed by Gayle King in Essence: “To sit at that inauguration and to look around at a crowd that was not reflective of the country, and I had to sit in that audience as one of the handfuls of people of color, all that I had to hold on to ... and it was a lot emotionally.” Essence

BOSTON GLOBE interview of NORAH O’DONNELL, who takes over the "CBS Evening News" next week: “Q. Is there anyone you want to interview but have not? O’Donnell: At the top of my list is to interview Kim Jong Un.

“Q. Have you put in the request? O’Donnell: Yes, we are working through different channels, but really the hardest interview I’ve ever done is probably with Tom Brady. I’m a Patriots fan. We talked about his TB12 method, and then he asked me to throw a football. Luckily, I didn’t embarrass myself too badly, but probably the most nervous I have ever been in an interview was having to throw a football alongside the greatest of all time.” Boston Globe

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NEW … House Minority Whip STEVE SCALISE will announce today that he raised $5.17 million in the second quarter of 2019, for a total of $9.52 million raised this year. He transferred $2 million to the NRCC.

THE JUICE …

-- AMANDA SLATER, who was Visa’s top Democrat, is heading to Rich Feuer Anderson as a principal, focusing on tax, trade and financial regulation.

THE PRESIDENT’S MONDAY … TRUMP will have lunch with VP Mike Pence at 12:45, and at 3:30 p.m., will speak about “America’s environmental leadership.” At 7:20 p.m., the president will go to a dinner in honor of the emir of Qatar, hosted by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin at the Treasury Department.

-- Remember, just two years ago, the U.S. was backing Saudi Arabia in its blockade of Qatar, amid a dispute over the tiny emirate’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, its leader is getting fêted by the president.

PLAYBOOK READS

PHOTO DU JOUR: The United States women's national team celebrates after winning the World Cup final against the Netherlands at the Stade de Lyon in Decines, outside Lyon, France, on Sunday, July 7. | Alessandra Tarantino/AP Photo

INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE -- DANIEL LIPPMAN, “The Purell presidency: Trump aides learn the president’s real red line: A self-described germaphobe, the 45th president is strictly enforcing proper hygiene inside the White House — and wherever else he goes”: He asks visitors if they’d like to wash their hands in a bathroom near the Oval Office. He’ll send a military doctor to help an aide caught coughing on Air Force One.

“And the first thing he often tells his body man upon entering the Beast after shaking countless hands at campaign events: ‘Give me the stuff’ — an immediate squirt of Purell. … White House staffers know that if they’re visibly sick or sound hoarse, they must steer clear of a president who doesn’t want to be around anyone who’s under the weather. ... On the 2016 campaign trail, new staffers were told not to cough or sneeze if they were in a room with Trump, said a former campaign staffer, who added that Trump and germs became a running joke among staffers.” POLITICO

“Greeks turned instead to the resurgent center-right New Democracy party led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a Harvard-educated former banker and son of a 1990s prime minister. His party secured almost 40 percent of the vote and a comfortable majority of 158 seats in the 300-seat Parliament.

“Mr. Tsipras’s party, Syriza, got about 31 percent of the vote — a stinging defeat for the prime minister personally and a bookend to what began as a social experiment, just as populist parties from the left and the right are on the ascent elsewhere in Europe.” NYT

2020 WATCH -- “Democratic field readies for the big shrink,”by Chris Cadelago: “With the first debates and two quarters of fundraising behind them, strategists with the leading Democratic campaigns and party operatives are beginning to rethink the conventional narrative of the 2020 primary.

“Gone is the expectation of a massive candidate pile-up when the early states begin voting, and a long, drawn-out primary. Few are worried anymore about the prospect of a brokered convention. Instead, the campaigns are revising their strategic outlooks to account for a field that is dramatically winnowed well before Iowa voters go to the caucuses — perhaps to as few as eight candidates on Feb. 3.

“By Super Tuesday, some expect between one and three candidates will be left standing.”

-- ANOTHER ONE? ... “Tom Steyer reconsiders 2020 and plans to enter the race,” by Daniel Lippman and Daniel Strauss: “Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmental activist who toyed with a 2020 presidential run before deciding against it, has told people he plans to announce that he’s entering the race for the Democratic nomination, according to three people familiar with his plans. … Steyer held a private conference call last week to announce to people who work for Need to Impeach, NextGen America and Steyer’s Sacramento office that he was planning to run, according to one of the people. …

“Though no senior staffing has been announced, two of the people with knowledge of Steyer’s plans expect Heather Hargreaves, who has been executive director of Steyer-founded NextGen America and has worked for Steyer for almost four years, to run the campaign.” POLITICO

MEDIAWATCH -- A five-part Sunday-evening rant from @realDonaldTrump, America’s media critic in chief: “Watching @FoxNews weekend anchors is worse than watching low ratings Fake News @CNN, or Lyin’ Brian Williams (remember when he totally fabricated a War Story trying to make himself into a hero, & got fired. A very dishonest journalist!) and the crew of degenerate …

“Comcast (NBC/MSNBC) Trump haters, who do whatever Brian & Steve tell them to do. Like CNN, NBC is also way down in the ratings. But @FoxNews, who failed in getting the very BORING Dem debates, is now loading up with Democrats & even using Fake unsourced @nytimes as …

“a ‘source’ of information (ask the Times what they paid for the Boston Globe, & what they sold it for (lost 1.5 Billion Dollars), or their old headquarters building disaster, or their unfunded liability? @FoxNews is changing fast, but they forgot the people who got them there!

“Impossible to believe that @FoxNews has hired @donnabrazile, the person fired by @CNN (after they tried to hide the bad facts, & failed) for giving Crooked Hillary Clinton the questions to a debate, something unimaginable. Now she is all over Fox, including Shep Smith, by far …

“their lowest rated show. Watch the @FoxNews weekend daytime anchors, who are terrible, go after her big time. That’s what they want -- but it sure is not what the audience wants!”

PLAYBOOKERS

SPOTTED: Australian Ambassador to the U.S. Joe Hockey on a United flight from San Antonio to Dulles last night. “He wore a huge black cowboy hat the entire flight,” according to our tipster.

WEEKEND WEDDINGS--Jennifer Haberkorn, a reporter covering Congress for the L.A. Times and a POLITICO alum, married Andrew Founds, a cybersecurity engineer with the MITRE Corp. Pool report: “The couple met two years ago in Arlington and were married Saturday in Jen’s hometown of Chicago.” Pic

-- Jennifer Ridder, manager for Montana Gov. Steve Bullock’s presidential campaign, married James Owens, a senior advisor on Bullock’s campaign, Saturday on Coal Train Hill, outside Steamboat Springs in their home state of Colorado. Pool report: “Joined by friends and family, the couple and guests celebrated the wedding and Independence Day with hiking, golfing, river rafting, fireworks, and a rodeo.” ColoradoGov. Jared Polis attended the wedding. Pic…Another pic

BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Kelley Hudak, VP at Cassidy & Associates, is 3-0. What she’s been listening to recently: “‘The Dropout’ podcast was absolutely captivating for me. It’s a deep dive into one in a series of high-profile, mini millennial empires that all toppled in similar fashion (think Fyre festival and false socialites). It does a great job illustrating that even in our highly digitized world, with the raw processing power of our smartphones and endless information at our fingertips, the intangible variable of a magnetic personality can still supersede all reason and continue to deceive large numbers of otherwise savvy people.” Playbook Plus Q&A

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About The Author : Anna Palmer

Anna Palmer is a senior Washington correspondent for POLITICO and co-author of POLITICO’s Playbook, the most indispensable morning newsletter for the biggest influencers in politics. Anna covers the world of Congress and politics, and has successfully chronicled the business of Washington insiders for years. Her stories take readers behind the scenes for the biggest fights in Washington as well as the 2016 election.

She is also the co-author of New York Times and national best seller, "The Hill to Die On: The Battle for Congress and the Future of Trump's America," which was published by Crown in 2019.

In addition to Playbook, Anna is also editorial director of Women Rule, a POLITICO platform that is dedicated to expanding leadership opportunities for women at all stages of their career.

Prior to becoming POLITICO’s senior Washington correspondent, she was the co-author of the daily newsletter, POLITICO Influence, considered a must-read on K Street. Anna previously covered House leadership and lobbying as a staff writer for Roll Call. She got her start in Washington journalism as a lobbying business reporter for the industry newsletter Influence. She has also worked at Legal Times, where she covered the intersection of money and politics for the legal and lobbying industry, first as a staff writer and then as an editor.

A native of North Dakota, Anna is a graduate of St. Olaf College, where she was executive editor of the weekly campus newspaper, the Manitou Messenger. She lives in Washington, D.C.

About The Author : Jake Sherman

Jake Sherman is a senior writer for POLITICO and co-author of POLITICO’s Playbook, the nation's leading political newsletter. He is also the co-author of New York Times and national best seller, "The Hill to Die On: The Battle for Congress and the Future of Trump's America," which was published by Crown in 2019. Jake is an NBC and MSNBC political contributor.

Since 2009, Jake has chronicled all of the major legislative battles on Capitol Hill, and has also traveled the country to cover the battle for control of Congress.

Jake is a Connecticut native, and a graduate of The George Washington University — where he edited The GW Hatchet — and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Jake lives in Washington with his wife Irene, son and daughter, and listens to an unhealthy amount of Grateful Dead and Phish.

About The Author : Daniel Lippman

Daniel Lippman is a reporter covering the White House and Washington for POLITICO. He was previously a co-author of POLITICO's Playbook and still writes Playbook's "Great Weekend Reads" section on Saturdays and Sundays and the "Social Data" section of POLITICO New York Playbook.

Before joining POLITICO, he was a fellow covering environmental news for E&E Publishing and a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in New York. He has also interned for McClatchy Newspapers and Reuters. During a stint freelancing in 2013, he traveled to the Turkish-Syrian border to cover the impact of the Syrian civil war for The Huffington Post and CNN.com.

He graduated from The Hotchkiss School in 2008 and from The George Washington University in 2012. Daniel hails from the Berkshires in western Massachusetts and enjoys playing tennis, seeing movies and trying out new restaurants in his free time.